


Fairytale Wrecks

by Fair_Feather_Friend



Series: Fairytale (Mottlemoth)  Fanfiction [1]
Category: Fairytale (Mottlemoth), Original Work
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Possibly non-graphic dub-con, Royalty, Seelie Court, Unseelie Court
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 17:19:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19398799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fair_Feather_Friend/pseuds/Fair_Feather_Friend
Summary: Fanfic   of Mottlemoth's Fairytale.An Unseelie Lord is forced into a marriage with a Seelie Princess. Everyone is unhappy forever.





	Fairytale Wrecks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mottlemoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mottlemoth/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Fairytale](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17706656) by [Mottlemoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mottlemoth/pseuds/Mottlemoth). 



> I love Mottlemoth's Fairytale. It is so very good.
> 
> I got thinking about Rex, who is an Unseelie Lord, married to a woman far older than he is, who he hates and who hates him. I wrote this piece, just to explore him a bit, because he's such a flawed, deeply tragic character and it all makes me sad. I expect this to be a wildly inaccurate terrible characterisation. But I had to do it. The feels demanded it. 
> 
> What is this almost het thing I have written???????!!!!! 
> 
> Everything belongs to Mottlemoth. I lay no claim on anything.

Once, upon a time, he'd been so young, so full of hope and joy.

Once he'd believed in love.

Once he'd been the star that shone the brightest, the flower of the unseelie court, much loved, much adored. He'd given his whole heart and received so much in return.

There'd been an older woman with flaming tresses and a temper that matched, whose passion had burned so fierce and oh so briefly. There'd been a quiet boy of shadows, and secrets, whose fear extinguished their love. There'd been others, never too many, still more than none. 

There'd been a friend, with honeyed hair, and such sweet kisses, that he'd adored beyond measure and had thought felt the same. They'd walked barefoot in forests, made love in the autumn leaves, and done so many forbidden things with little thought to the consequences.

And then they'd made but a single mistake, drunk on romance and had been discovered in the worst possible of ways. 

The fallout had been horrific. 

He still did not even know what they'd done to that friend of his. Had he been threatened, warned away, beaten in both body and mind until he discarded all thoughts of love? Or simply offered wealth, power, a favourable marriage, in exchange for casting his lover aside? Had it always been a ruse, designed to destroy him?

He did not like to think of those days, of how he'd been so completely betrayed by those he'd loved and trusted. Of how quickly his star had fallen, and he'd been discarded as if he were so utterly worthless.

He still had hope.

The Crown Princess of the seelie court was still seeking a husband. It was the stuff of fairytales. And he was younger, brighter, more beautiful, and of higher birth than any of the other candidates. 

Their union would bridge the two courts in alliance, bringing them closer together, strengthening their ties. That the Seelie Queen even considered the possibility of such a marriage showed how desperate she was to see her eldest wed.

He had not realised that at that time, the only reason the Crown Princess had said yes to him was because she expected everyone else to say no.

He'd had all sorts of romantic ideas, and dreams of what might be, even though he was not truly given a choice. They sold him, trussed him up, and offered him on silver platter for the Seelie Court to devour.

He'd been determined to make the best of the situation. He'd seen another chance with the Seelie court. Here was a chance of love, of friendship, of finding a purpose. 

She'd been so much older, colder, nothing at all like him. She'd spent her entire life caged, while he'd flown free. 

And the ways of their court were little like what he was accustomed to. What would have had the unseelie court flocking to him, laughing, had the seelie staring blankly, or worse looking down upon him as if he were worse than the filth on their boots.

He was too coarse, too powerful, too tactless, too wild, and he saw far too much. He was too different. And every single attempt to fit in was rebuffed.

They didn't even use his name. Instead they used a crude, bastardised moniker more befitting of a dog. He'd let them, at first because he thought it a term of affection. By the time he realised this was not the case it was far too late, and the boy he'd once been was already dead.

He'd hoped for the fairytale romance, and he'd done everything in his power to make it come true. He'd tried to romance her. He'd done everything he was meant to, and none of it had made the slightest bit of difference.

Flowers, gifts, picnics, starlit walks, poetry, had all been spurned. Even the ill thought out, drunken serenade, was only met with mild distaste.. 

If not romance, then surely they could build a partnership on other foundations. He'd changed tacks and tried for friendship. Many an arranged marriage had less stable foundations, and love could surely grow. 

And so he'd tried to speak to her, to share her interests, to find a single piece of common ground. But every single word she spoke to him was dragged unwillingly from her lips. Every stilted conversation filled with a bitter resentment, that he'd never be who she wanted him to be. 

He'd tried so hard and nothing he did, or said made the slightest bit of difference. 

She portrayed herself as the martyr and he the beast.

He'd practically begged for the slightest scrap of attention. And the only thing that got any response at all was anger. How low he'd fallen.

That first time, their wedding night, she'd just lain there, naked, beautiful, and completely untouchable. 

When he'd tried to woo her with words she'd ignored him. 

When he tried to leave she'd demanded he remain and perform his husbandly duties. 

When he'd tried to kiss her she'd turned her head to the side, lips firmly sealed. 

When he'd tried to caress her skin, she'd shuddered in revulsion and told him to just get on with it. 

She was determined to lie there and suffer through the indignity of it all.

And he couldn't, wouldn't, let her turn him into that sort of monster. Had she hoped he would be an unseelie beast that would ravage her, get her with child, and give her every reason to hate him? Well he always was a disappointment to her.

When he'd turned to the bottle, and she'd been forced to take matters in hand herself, it only made her hate him more.

Of all the times he'd imagined his wedding night, it had never been like this. Over in minutes and then ordered to leave. 

Something inside him broke that night. This was to be his life now. Forced to perform as a prize stallion might, useful for only one thing.

He always made her take charge, some perverse part of him took pleasure in making sure she could never claim she was not willing. And she hated him even more that he did not let her pretend. She grew more efficient at getting what she wanted. It was over in several humiliating minutes, only to be repeated the next month.

And then one month she simply did not demand his presence. That was how he discovered she was pregnant. They never told him anything. 

And with that his duty was complete and they had no more use for him. He had nowhere else to go. He was not certain whether he should feel relief or regret. 

He'd been so angry. Anger was all he had left. He was excluded from every single part of the pregnancy, as if they wished he had no part to play in the proceedings. Any time he expressed an interest, or voiced an opinion they would just give him that look, that shut him out from everything.

No one even cared to tell him when she'd given birth. He'd had to hear from the servants. 

They did not let him hold his son. Had not let him name him. He was excluded from every aspect of the boy's life.

He dreamed of holding the baby, of singing the songs he himself had grown up on. Of soothing his cries, feeding him, changing him, doting on him every moment of every day. He loved the boy more than he'd ever known was possible. He'd hoped that this, fatherhood, would make it all worthwhile. 

He fought frantically until there was no fight left within him and it did not make the slightest difference. They held all the power and he had none. He held onto hope that once the boy was a little older, there could be something.

His son would see the truth of things, and he'd be able to be the father the boy deserved. They'd wander the forests and he'd teach the boy the dark old ways, his place in the world, and how to use his power.

But they had destroyed even that. When they feared that the boy was of an age where he might begin to seek out a relationship with his father, they sent him away, to live with the humans, so he would be forever out of reach. 

They hadn't even told him until after he realised his son was gone. He'd been denied the chance to even say goodbye. 

They'd trusted humans, a boarding school, far more than they'd ever trusted him. It should have been him, raising his son, teaching him of the ways of the fae and not how to be a human.

The years slipped by until he'd lived here, with the Seelie Court, far longer than he'd ever spent with the Unseelie. He could not go back, and he still did not belong. There was nowhere for him, and no hope for a better future.

He'd been twenty-three and so young with it. Filled with hopes and dreams. And now he was nearing fifty, with a wife that hated him, a son that despised him, and so little to show for his years.

He saw that boy he'd been, in the son he had, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop them crushing him too. 

There was no happily ever after here.  
No storybook ending for his tale.  
It wasn't even the end.


End file.
